Adolescences fun? Who said that?
by Holly go lightly1
Summary: *UPDATE* All the horrors of Hogwarts School of Teenage Angst all here in this fanfic...as only a young Severus Snape can experience them. It's true what they say: People who like being young are insane.
1. Couldn't You Just Pretend To Be Nice?

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First of a series (don't cringe, it won't be THAT bad) that I plan to write about Snape. This one takes place when he's sixteen and he falls in love with the worst possible person. Ha ha, comic relief comes when we learn his sister(Verona) dresses like a Goth. More volumes to come soon.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Everything belongs to J K Rowling. I only own Verona, Fiona (I didn't realized they rhymed), and Elle. Verona and Fiona, Verona and Fiona....*writer goes off into a chant/dance break*

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Chapter One

But Call Me Elle

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It was the first day of my fifth term at Hogwarts, and I was blissful to be home. While the rest of the student body was dining in the Great Hall, I was walking around the school, ecstatic to see things both familiar and joy-bringing at the same time. I loved it here, despite the torment I received from my peers. It was no matter: I'd trained myself early to take the mellow with the bitter. Perhaps James Potter wouldn't even see me this year; maybe he'd be so intrigued with the stick up his ass, I'd be no more than a shadow to him.

I'd been prowling down the long corridors for quite some time (it was dark now) when my ears were introduced to a human sound that was quietly cautiously reverberating off the walls. Almost against my control, I followed it with great inquisitiveness until I stumbled upon its discreet location.

It was coming from a quivering bundle of school robes and wiry flaxen tresses, which was wedged between two columns that opened out onto the luscious court yard, which was thriving in its amber autumn splendor. It snuffled petulantly, but I felt some compassion for it. It was a girl, after all; she'd probably lost her way in the new territory. I mean, she had to be a new pupil: no one last year had such hair.

"Girl, I say!" I barked, causing the creature to flinch miserably and rear its head an iota. "You ought to be in the Great Hall for the sorting. I suppose you were thrown off by a trick staircase or something of the kind. In my graces, I will guide you back to the Great Hall, but I deem it indispensable that you learn firstly to always watch where you're walking!"

I had charmed her!

"No, I'm not lost, you stupid git, I'm _pretending _to be lost," she muttered tolerantly in a thoroughly congested voice, justifying herself with an air of nonchalant audacity that made me quiver in partial fury and partial envy. She then swiveled her neck abruptly and continued to sob into her robes with such vigor that I began wonder if this was a talent of hers.

"Look," I growled, trembling because I felt my superior control as an old-timer creeping out of my grasp, "I don't draw up the rules, but I have no intention of letting you infract them. New students must be sorted today."

"I _was_ sorted! That's the whole ordeal!" she hollered at me. "Good God, you're an ass."

"I suppose you're a Griffindor then," I hissed maliciously. "They march around like swaggering fools in this school, and you seem eager to join the crew."

The girl let out an inhumanly loud wail that shook me where I stood. 

"That's the thing!" she screamed, turning to me with a face crimson with weeping. "I _wasn't_ sorted into Griffindor! It doesn't make any sense at all! That stupid hat, little smug piece of shit, it said that...that...." The girl's thick lips trembled in an attempt to stifle another moan. "The hat said I didn't have enough 'gumption' to be a Griffindor. I mean, really!"

"Obviously not, you're sitting hear bawling in the cold instead of talking it out with the Headmaster, you dumb ass." I blinked in realization of my own words. "God, I'm sorry, I truly didn't mean...."

"No, you're right! That's just it! Don't apologize, just because I'm a pussy." She let out a burdensome sigh as she let her knees drop from her chin so she could mop her damp cheeks with her palms. "But it's my family! I'm not worried about me, but....Everyone in my family was in that house. Everyone! Both of my brothers, my older sister, my parents, my grandparents....It was almost written in stone that I'd be....Oh well, but I'm not. Never will be, no use in trying." She shrugged. "Anyhow, who are you?"

Watching the irate color drain from her face, I suddenly trembled with the epiphany of her attraction. She had sky-colored eyes, skin that told glories of fresh milk and warm fruit, a smile that glittered with brackets and wires, Guinivere's mane, and fern-like eyelashes that tilted in a feline fashion.

"My name? Oh, uh...."

She smiled in a goading fashion, exposing white teeth that put my yellow ones to shame. I folded my lips over them as I muttered,

"Severus."

"I'm Elle." She then paused and flushed a few hues of pink. "Actually, my full name is Ellamae. Horribly American, I hate it. I sound like a Muggle car mechanic."

I grinned, but I didn't know why.

"Any brothers or sisters, Severus?"

"One, a sister. Her name's Verona."

"It's pretty, but a far cry from the mystical sound of Severus. Latin, I think, yes?"

"Mm"

"So, what are you doing in the corridors, Severus?"

For a good twenty seconds, I forgot. I then lifted my eyes from the floor and stared off into the courtyard. "Um, I was given permission to. You see...I don't have too many companions....Too many foes, really."

"So do I. It's why I left Atlasander, really. I was literally abused at my old school."

"Oh, shut up. You weren't unpopular, you're just trying to pity me."

She blinked indignantly. "Who would lie about something like that?"

I rolled my eyes and set my teeth. "But you're too...."

She stared intently, raising a thick eyebrow, sucking in her cheeks to create a truly austere countenance. "Well?"

"Never mind what you are," I sighed. I'd almost said she was too pretty to be a pariah. I then blinked. "I just mean that you probably won't have too much friction at this school. Who knows? I think you'll be rather popular."

"Whatever, it's never really intrigued me, being popular. It matters a lot to my brother...."

"And my sister," I chimed in for no reason at all.

"Oh! Was she the girl that looked like a model in Slytherin?"

I stifled a growl.

"Is she? Are you?"

I froze and brandished a truly searing scowl in her direction. "Don't be a bitchy little vixen."

"I wasn't poking fun at you. To put it candidly, I think you're...quite striking."

"Yes, I'm quite a pretty picture with my oily hair and hawk nose. Honestly, Elle, you're really not humorous."

"Wasn't trying to be," she muttered, standing up and straightening the creases in her sweeping robes. She then paused and glared at me rather frostily, her azure eyes darkening to the color of sapphires.

"What?" I demanded.

"I wish to return to the Hall, Severus. Escort me," she commanded in an imperial manner.

"Don't you want to wait for your footmen?" I hissed dryly, genuflecting and pantomiming kissing her Mary Jane-clad foot.

"You suit me," she replied haughtily, putting her hand on the back of my head and pressing my face to the floor. I gasped out in shock as I sprawled out on the stone like a linen sheet.

"Count your blessings that I'm not angry with you....I'd break your neck if I wasn't a gentleman."

"Shut up and scream 'Mercy', you little fop," she murmured without expression, calmly placing her foot on my back. When I sputtered in rage and asphyxiation, she merely sighed and let me roll over. "You're no fun," she accused, her arms akimbo. "If I wasn't so dejected, I'd taunt you for it. Call you a pansy, maybe. But since I'm without spirits today, shall we call it a draw?"

"You've got a bone-splintering grasp for a girl," I muttered between a few dry heaves as I slithered along the floor, shaking my head. "Good God, woman...."

"I don't play nice," she replied neatly. She stood motionless and placid as I collected myself and stood before repeating her order. When I nodded as a symbol of agreement and began to walk, she followed me like a fair shadow, mute and attentive. Her silence made me ill at ease, for I sensed her eyes following my steps. "Well, what is it?" I asked, half-way through our trek.

"You've got a nice butt for a fifteen year-old."

"What now?!" I roared, whipping around to see her giggling cheerfully. I then sensed her light-heartedness and lack of malignance and felt goaded to join in as well. "And you've got a nice rack for a girl."

"That's the ticket, I knew you weren't such a nasty person," she almost chirped. She then put an arm around my neck and nudged me to indicate that I was to continue walking. "You know, I really do like you. I hope you won't ostracize me because I splattered you on the floor."

"I don't think that should impair our relationship." I then looked at her furtively, a tiny smile twitching on my lips. "I really could have pushed you off if I wanted to."

"Maybe next time, old chum. What do you think?" 

"Most definitely." I then stopped at the door to the Great Hall and leered at it. "Bloody hell, we're here. It sounds like the ceremony's almost over, I can hear people swarming towards the door."

"Everything ends sooner or later," she replied ominously. She then adjusted the pointed black hat perched atop her mane of blonde tresses and struck a half-hearted pose.

"Tres chic."

"Thank you. You cannot comprehend my anguish when I came here and realized everyone was wearing it as well."

"You'll find most of the students here lack creativity."

She shrugged to express her consent and waited for the door to open. When it did, the entire school flooded out in a melee of shouting and guffaws. I watched her stand paralyzed, her eyes misty and stony at the same time, a tiny puddle of tears making them look hopeless. Suddenly feeling a trifle bad for her, I approached her and put a perspiring palm on her broad shoulder. "You know, Elle," I murmured, "you really shouldn't worry about your family. I'm sure you'll have so much fun in Ravenclaw that you won't even remember them."

Moving her thin lips slightly, she swiveled her head and stared at me gratefully, almost dependently. "Thank you, Sevvy," she whispered, a tiny tear wriggling down her cheek and onto my knuckles. She then looked away hastily and swallowed thickly.

"Hey, Elle! Over here!"

Elle waved to an unseen presence. "Oh, hi, James."

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James! James Potter! My greatest fear! My reason for being a maverick! That little twerp...her brother?! Our relationship was doomed from birth. I let my hand slip from her shoulder and rest at my side as I briskly stormed away.

"Severus, wait!" she cried. 

"I'm looking for Verona," I lied, trying to flee in the great throng, finding it impossible. I couldn't face James....

"I'm right here, you little git," Verona muttered, almost perched on James's shoulder. She folded her arms and cocked her head in a self-important way. I glared at her: brazen little Marauder slut. She was Remus' girlfriend and she gabbed on about him all summer. He now stood next to Sirius and Peter (two more Marauders) who were smiling at me in a lupine fashion. I sneered in reply: it was a mutual repulsion.

"Verona, this is my sister, Elle. Oy, Peter, stop blushing. Sirius, doesn't he look like a pomegranate? Little plump pomegranate. Lily, Fiona! Stop giggling and say hello to Elle."

"Love the rocks," Verona said generously and cordially, brushing her fingers against the necklace of glistening black stones strung around Elle's white neck.

"I don't look like a pomegranate, do I?" Peter demanded, grinning sheepishly at Elle.

"Stop flirting, you little geek, she's mine, James said so," Sirius snarled jokingly, blushing himself when Elle laughed lightly.

"Omigod, I love your hair," portly Lily Evans gushed, feeling Elle's soft waterfall of light locks.

"I hope you'll join cheerleading," Fiona said quietly.

Remus stared wide-eyed at her, gaping. I hated him for looking like he wanted to hit on her. The trendy, attractive people got everything. It was so unjust.

"Oh, crud, it looks like I missed my tour guide. Where's Ravenclaw, again?"

"It's no too far, I'll take you," James shrugged, snatching her forearm and toting her along.

"Let me come!" Peter squeaked, trotting behind them.

"Fleas before beauty, Pettigrew," Sirius scoffed, jumping in front of him.

"And pearls before pebbles, Black," Lily tittered, standing at attention at Elle's side.

"Hey, what about us?" Fiona called, catching Verona by her long black plait and giving it a healthy yank.

No touchy, Fiona, NO TOUCHY," Verona barked, holding her skull and rocking slightly in pain.

Watching their gay procession with a concoction of anguish and longing, I retreated back into the Great Hall to wait for Dumbledore to receive me. I had questions, suggestions, comments....

"Severus!" 

I spun around and saw Elle being pulled into the next corridor, pausing to wave congenially. "I'll see you in DADA!" she mouthed before flashing a smile that glittered of dental work and inner contentment and vanishing altogether in the current of popular teenagers.

"Bye, Elle," I hollered in reply, almost certain that she heard me in the next room. I then clasped my hands behind my back as my callow, impressionable mind became a rose-tinted cloud of things to tell her tomorrow. 

"Severus?" I heard Dumbledore murmur in a questioning voice behind my back.

Without thinking, I whipped around, grinning like a fool, and blurted, "She's so very, very pretty, Headmaster! I hope she meant what she said about my butt." I then paused. "AAAGH! I just said that out loud." I began to kick the threshold of the Great Hall, chanting, "Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!"

*Not 2 bad for one of my stories; not 2 banal, that is. Well, a little banal, but it's gets less banal w/time. Keep reading and remember to review!*


	2. Oh Charming

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Chapter Two

Thriving Willows Not Only Thrive (or "Verona's impeccable Sight")

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Disclaimer: I used a couple ideas from "The Simpsons" and the "Bring It On." JK Rowling created most of these people. Too lazy 2 make this long. *blushes* God, I can't believe I used this stuff from "Bring It On"....but I didn't know any cheers, so I just used theirs. Don't sue. I gave them credit 4 them.

Dear Widow Spider,

It's official. Fleece is a Thriving Widow. Good call on the name. 

Got another question: is it true you're dumping Moony? GOOD GOD, GIRL! GIVE HIM TO ME! I'M SO LONELY! PRONGS/ BUTTERCUP, YOU/ MAN OF THE MONTH, WHEN DOES MY TURN COME?!?! Just kidding. Ha ha, I think you have the right idea ditching Moony: he's too poor. (Ha ha, just kidding again.)

Cheerleading practice today. Can you believe Dumb. wants to get rid of it? Cheerleading rox. Ha ha. Hope your creepy brother isn't there. Why won't he leave Fleece alone? I feel so bad for her. She's so pretty and he's such a freak. 

Luv,

Broadbones

Verona Snape's sharp cheekbones jutted in a wry smile as she read the first scroll of parchment Galatea the Owl brought her at the breakfast table. Yes, the relationship between her and Remus was none existent. Beyond that: it was dust. She was so very tired of his gentleness and mealy-mouthed ways. She much preferred Sirius's radical passions and rebellious nature. He was also a sight more mysterious to boot.

The second scroll was from Fleece (Elle).

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Dear Widow Spider,

Just Fleece here. Thanks for the offer to cheer, but I'm turning it down. I've never had any luck with those cheerleader pants. They're just too chafing.

You and Sirius would make a great duo. I just thought of it while I was brushing my teeth this morning. Consider it.

Did you lock your brother in the storage closet again? I don't really think he likes it. You should really leave him alone, he's not as bad as you try to pretend he is.

My first letter. How'd it go? Respond, si'l vous plait.

Respectfully Yours,

Fleece

Ugh. The last thing Verona needed in the Thriving Widows was a humanitarian/orator. Where was Elle getting off treating her like this? For the most part, Verona had liked her. She'd also become quite bored with Fiona and Lily's bubbly demeanors. Elle was a smart smack in the face: something the group needed. Verona made a mental note to inform Elle that Severus was not only the greatest "square" that ever tread the earth, but also a very bizarre little creature. She smiled again with the thought of spilling out some of her brother's greatest blunders to a girl he obviously pestered.

Across the table from her, Severus was tranimpy supping on his meager breakfast of oatmeal and toast, his sinister eyes locked on a freshly-turned page of his latest book interest. The sight of him made Verona want to vomit.

"Oh, Sevvy," she murmured, nudging his skeletal calf under the table.

His large, black eyebrows furrowed at the sound of her voice and he raised his needle-thin eyes to meet her similarly constructed ones. "What is it?" he inquired curtly, lifting his tilted spoon to his lips as he savored his breakfast, his thin cheeks moving in a revolting way as he enjoyed his meal.

"There was a train accident this morning. Care to see the victims?" Verona stretched out her tongue, which was coated with a repulsive paste of congealed bacon and eggs.

"Ew! That's horribly nauseating!" Severus squealed, his squeamish muscles contracting as he squinted and tried not to look at her.

Verona leered. "You're right," she sighed. "They deserve a proper burial." She promptly spit the mash into his bowl of meal and stood up, shaking toast crumbs from her school robes and sauntering away as he brother shrieked in shock and rage, leaping up from his seat and almost running from his bowl like an animal from a predator.

Life was good.

**********

"Okays, everybody attentive today?" Verona bellowed, charging out on the Quidditch field, which was perpetually verdant, even through the winter months: a very crucial thing for cheerleading practice.

"Ready as I'll ever be," Lily chirped, wetting her fingertips and dragging a few straying tresses back into their plaits. She squared her shoulders and tumbled off into a flawless routine of handsprings. Verona smiled. Despite her plumpness, she was as nimble as a supple breeze and three times as quick. A captain of the Slytherin cheerleading squad could appreciate that effortlessly, even if Lily was the captain of a rivaling adversary.

Fiona was sprawled out on the lawn in plum leg-warmers and wrist bands: house colors. She was listening attentively to Errit Fowler, the Ravenclaw cheer captain, as she rambled off the complicated routine. Fiona, as usual, was the only Ravenclaw who looked perplexed. It'd been a great enigma to everyone (her parents, primarily) that she'd gotten into the most intellectual house of them all. Fiona was a little obtuse. Actually, she was the foil of everyone else in her house. Mostly, the girls were reedy, dour-looking ice queens who found pleasures in the arts and in their texts. They rarely socialized and when they did, it was only with a select few. Fiona was a bumbling, bubbling little puppy. Just as portly as Lily and just as coquettish, she giggled, devouring rich sweets as she browsed through the sports sections and attempted to blaze conversations with the other Ravenclaw girls, who looked at her incredulously and avoided her like a violent plague.

"We ready yet?" Calypso Debris demanded petulantly, eyeing Verona beadily as she shivered in her daringly short cheerleading costume.

Verona sneered. "This isn't Minsky's Burlesque, Debris. Pull down that skirt." Verona brushed by a flushed and irritated Calypso and circled the girls in their bottle-green skirts and blouses, calling out, "First routine, as much as we've rehearsed."

Gathering in a small formation and performing under the scrutinizing but wandering eyes of a cloaked Professor Jinx, the crotchety, middle-aged Astronomy teacher who hated Lily and Verona's sauce and salt feverishly. He pretended to be indifferent to the challenging glare Verona gave him before commencing the rehearsal. 

"C'mon, bring it, Jinxy," Verona mumbled before clapping her hands and joining the girls in yelling:

ALLLLLLLRIGHT

WE'RE SWEET

WE'VE GOT THE BEST, WE CAN'T BE BEAT

WE'RE THE BEST, SO SCORE THEM POINTS

TO WIN THE GAME, WE'LL ROCK THIS JOINT!

GO SERPENTS, GO SERPENTS, GO-GO-GO SERPENTS!

GO SERPENTS, GO SERPENTS, GO-GO-GO SERPENTS!

"Aw, gee, girls, I feel chafed!" Verona shrieked.

"It's chilly!" Byrd Sinclair and Skye Matthews roared back.

"Too cool!" Garnet Williams bellowed.

I SAY "BRR, IT'S COLD OUT HERE,

I SAY THERE MUST BE SOMETHIN' IN THE ATMOSPHERE!"

I SAY "BRR, IT'S COLD OUT HERE,

I SAY THERE MUST BE SOMETHIN' IN THE ATMOSPHERE!"

**********

"I don't see why the astute must suffer so to study in the fresh air," Elle sighed grudgingly, glaring at the prancing fools on the field as she brushed ice and slush off of a bench in the stands so she could sit. "I bet if I shook my money-maker in a skirt rolled up to my navel, I could sit in comfort, too." Elle raised a gloved fist to an unseen presence. "Bastards! Bastards, all of them!"

"Oh, I don't know," Severus murmured quietly, trying not to look too admiringly at the scantily-clad girls as they called out their little mocking cheers. "It's really not SO bad, honestly."

Elle leered and shuffled tetchily in her frothy-pink woolen scarf that swathed her neck entirely, batting absently at the prickly red earmuffs she wore as well. "Don't say I should join too. You're the last person I need to hear that from. I'm so fed up with goddamned cheerleading I could vomit up a whale." Stretching out her knee-socked legs and bashing the planks of the row of seats in front of her, Elle furrowed her brow pensively. "You don't really want me to join, do you?"

"It's a tough choice," he muttered sincerely.

She laughed dryly. "You're a tough guy." 

Beneath them, they heard a dull din of rambunctious spirits. Craning her neck, Elle spotted her brother and his spineless cronies making a mockery of the sashaying girls by imitating their movements and struts and bellowing as they primped each other and giggled. The girls on the field were overtly battling the urge to combust into guffaws; even the Slytherin ones had a difficult trial in veiling their pleasure at seeing them.

"Ugh, Gay Pride parade," Elle grunted gutturally, narrowing her eyes malignantly. "Honestly, where do they get off thinking that looks remotely attractive?"

"What do you mean?"

"Seriously, Severus! You probably know them as well as anyone, having schooled with them so long. Ugh. They're just so...infantile. Mm. Ten-dollar word."

"All of them?"

"Yes. Every one an asinine."

"But I thought you and Sirius---"

"Well, I d---"

Elle glanced up at him and was a little bewildered by the seething glint of intent in his alarmingly ebony eyes."What's the matter?"

Severus flinched and reddened to a ruddy shade of blood.

"What?" Elle paused and nibbled her peeling lips in concern. "If you're tormenting yourself with the possibility that I'm going to become friends with one of those buffoons, you're sadly doing so in vain."

"W-w-w-what?" Severus stammered in utter shock. "You mean to say that...that I'm the b-better man?"

Grinning, Elle pressed a firm fingertip against the narrow tip of his nose. "In more ways than you know," she assured him, pinking a few shades darker herself.

"Yes," he replied, emitting a quivering laugh as he used one of his long skeletal fingers to incise his initials in a patch of frost on the back of a bench. "I surmised as much. Me the better man. Ha. Really. I've been telling that to myself since I was barely eleven."

Elle beamed quietly. "You're not going to slip into the 'You like me, you really like me' oration, are you? If so, be courteous and give me enough time to run shrieking into the woods."

"You're a pitiful, sickly, deranged form of a girl, aren't you?"

She flexed her oddly thick eyebrows in reply. "You have no clue." 

+++++++++++

"One more lap, girls, c'mon!" Verona goaded, dashing after the panting girls as they made their final circle of the field. 

"Yes, girlies, c'mon!" Sirius mimicked, pretending to shake a long luxurious head of hair as he strutted like a Southern belle around another patch of field.

From elsewhere on the Ravenclaw sector, Verona heard the sound thud of Fiona collapsing in fatigue. "I WANNA DIE!" she professed to anyone who took the time to even take a second glance at her heaving, sprawled-out figure on the playing grass. "LORD, I WANNA DIE!"

"No, you don't, then you'd be with all those goldfish you accidentally killed," Verona called over to her as the head of Fiona's squad shook her head in a forlorn way.

Verona herself was in exceptional shape. Like a well-kept mare, she trotted about at a full sprint, her billowing black hair like a handful of crepe streamers behind her, her eyes glittering like a prowling vixen as she felt the eyes of the boys that encircled the field. They saw. The admired. They praised. But they never caught. Never. 

Suddenly, a twinge of an impulse caught her. For no certain reason, she found herself raising her eyes to the stands for something. An odd energy was throwing her off. Something was amiss in routine, something.....

She stumbled onto it with a gasp.

Her thoroughly aloof recluse of a sibling curled up beside the charismatic Tinkerbell named __

Fleece, offering her his gloves, chuckling unnecessarily when she accepted them, all a while his face was the color of a fine red wine.

"Oh my god....." She staggered towards the stands, exceedingly long strands of oily hair creeping into her parted lips. "Severus is in love." 

++++++++++

Severus slunk downstairs after lunch to peer inside Filch's spare broom closet. True to his name, Argus Filch was overly notorious for pinching things students left about the school, even if they'd only set them down for a moment. At the moment, Severus was rummaging through carton after carton on a quest for his Charms textbook. Sighing tetchily at finding it absent, he briskly slapped a palm against the door, hearing it crack against the threshold with a grim satisfaction.

"Hallo, lavey lave."

Gasping in a startled manner, he saw Verona slouched against the wall beside the closet, looking utterly devious.

"Good God, Verona, give a boy an ulcer, why don't you."

"Nah, it's how I accidentally knocked off grandpa." He saw her eyes twinkle merrily and cordially as she produced a pleasant beam.

He had an inkling that something was amiss.

"What do you want?" he demanded warily.

Verona grinned. "If you say so." She placed one of her knobby elbows against the wall and used the palm connected to it to prop up her chin. Her eyes dilated mischievously above the luminous smile. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what? What is it that you're blithering on about today?"

"Elle."

Tiny patches of rosy skin dappled his sallow complexion, but he tossed his head with seemingly convincing arrogance. "Potter, you mean? Well, what of her?"

Verona used on of her spiky fingers to prod his gaunt collarbone. "What of her. Silly little fool. You think I wouldn't comprehend it by now? I saw the two of you snuggling outside in the stands like two waifish cats come home." She took her finger to drag her lower eyelid further down her face. "Brimming with tears, I was. Utterly quaint."

His skin was a flaming crimson. "You don't know what you're talking about! Y-you really know how to create a fuss over nothing, you know. S-s-she was cold. I just, uh, happened to be there. It's not like I talk to her often. She barely knows my name. Honestly, I don't think she knows it at all, really. I'm really not her type. You know she and Remus are destined to hit it off."

Verona smirked. "What's her middle name?"

"Jane," he shrugged without hesitation. 

"Who's her favorite actor and actress?"

"Zero Mostel and Audrey Hepburn."

"Birthday?"

"Twentieth of May. Who transformed you into a sphinx, eh, Ron?"

"Come to grasp with it, Prince Mishkin, you're hooked!"

"Prince Mishkin?"

"I haven't the might to thoroughly explain that jibe. Truth be told, I don't think anyone does. Cliff notes of it means you're loony, though."

"Hmm, not too flattering, eh?"

"Thoroughly beside the point. Why didn't you tell me you fancied her?"

"Fuck off."

"Ooh, getting peevish, I see."

"Quite!" he admitted, beginning to work out a strategy for escape by furtively making note of the possible exits behind her. 

"Well, does she like you?" Verona pressed intently, her redwood of a body making it a bit of a trial to weasel away from her.

"I haven't a notion, go away."

"That is to say," she continued imperatively, "that you don't care if your love is unrequited and tragic?"

Severus clucked his tongue and furrowed his brow at her. "I hardly say I fit either of those categories, not being a dramatic like yourself."

"Narcissus and Echo."

He spun his beetle-black eyes to the ceiling. "Not likely. But I would like to make note that with any of your lovers, it's always been Hades and Persephone...you playing the rather uncomplimentary role of Hades with a Persephone mask."

"Stinging."

"Shut up."

"Really, I'm damaged beyond hope."

"I said go away."

"And where are you going in such a rush?"

"It's none of your business."

"Into the caressing limbs of your dove?"

"Candidly, I was going to the men's room."

"Some clandestine tryst, no doubt."

"I never referred to the function in that manner, but to each his own."

"Have a care, sibling o' mine," she called after him in a superlatively gay manner as he dashed out of her sight. "I'll make a lover out of you yet!"

"It's not likely!" he returned over his shoulder, slowly feeling the liberation of being free of her talons as he rounded a corner. "In fact, I believe it's utterly and enigmatically impossible!"

He'd fled into the safety of a vacant corridor and took off into a sprint. He was emancipated at last! The joy of not hearing her smooth voice emit those abrasively mortifying words she was so fond of. But when he thought he'd at last found complete solitariness in the chilled depths of the corridor, he swore he could have heard her voice behind him murmuring:

"Ho, ye of little faith!"

It disturbed him.

***Verona rocks. She HAS to be my favorite character. R & R******


	3. Father, Where Have You Been?

****

Chapter Three

"Isn't She Great?"

I gazed up at the pinnacle of a swaying, towering tree outside of a tiny beacon of light streaming from a tiny crevice in the mammoth stone walls of Hogwarts. "You know you'll be caught," I informed Elle rather half-heartedly.

She glanced down at me, one leg snugly binding the trunk of the tree, the other dangling in a manner fit to shock any creature with a phobia of sky-high places. You can imagine how I was hyperventilating: I am the most eminent coward when it comes to heights. "Honestly, keep quiet!" she hissed, steeling a quick peep at the window the tree grazed against. "I just want to take a tiny little peek inside the staff room."

"Where is all this effrontery deriving from?" I demanded, softly wheezing into my brilliantly bleached handkerchief. It's not a jest, I really do fall short of breath when I see someone so many meters from the earth. "You don't normally find pleasure in these sort of escapades. What's James goading you into?"

With a soft grunt, Elle's vaguely distinguishable chassis ambled itself around a mass of twigs and boughs. "Nothing, truly," she admitted with saintly frankness. "I just---Son of a shrew, did I just sit on a bird?---was keenly intrigued with what the teachers do on Friday nights. Who isn't? Anyhow, it isn't that great of an ordeal.---Whew!---The staff room is barely on the second floor, and if I fall you can catch me." A pant. "You would catch me w---hold a tick, no you wouldn't. Son of a shrew! I should have hired Narcissa to be my henchman, pardon me, henchwoman. Oh, no matter. The ground is shockingly springy in December and I have a lovely backside to cushion my fall."

I swabbed my beading forehead. "Don't say you're going to fall. Please don't. Humor my nerves. Be sweet for once."

"Oh, you know I won't fall."

I blinked.

"I'm quite certain with my statistics I'll _plunge_."

"Oh GOD." I nearly vomited.

"_Tumble_, then?"

"Another word and I'll snitch!" I vowed vehemently. "Don't cross me, Elle! I swear to you I will!"

"Of course you'll snitch, you always snitch and it so aggravates me." I saw her plaited mane swing slightly inside the curtain of leaves and I saw her slightly-pointed face poke out to squint with derision. "And I treat that with supreme censure."

"Certain rules must not be infracted if a school is to run properly, Elle, I tell you!"

A profound sigh. "Still...." She zipped out of sight, but her voice plagued me morosely. "But tattling on Frank Longbottom? Fie, Severus, that's like pitching a whimpering mongrel down a flight of stairs. There ought to be qualms for grassing on people, or at least a handful." A throaty chuckle. She had a very guttural tone of voice that never produced a sufficient giggle. It always sounded like a tinny little squeal when she tried. "But I highly approved of telling on Sirius. In fact, I encourage it."

I eyed the flailing bush a little warily. "Er...Elle?"

"Yes, Severus, I'm almost there, what is it?"

Something had been plaguing me for weeks now. "You know...you know that new course Dumbledore set up for every third Saturday? 'Advanced Dark Arts Detection and Defense'? You know, with that---now, what is he, it escapes me---oh yes, Auror Moody?"

"What about it?" Most rustling from the tree. She was progressing steadily.

"Well...I've never taken it...but is it true that he keeps a few pupils behind after each class for an hour?"

"Mm, yep."

"Has he ever asked you to do so?"

"Oh, often." A strained pause. "Sometimes."

"What does he do? Why you? Why you and Frank Longbottom?"

"Where'd you hear about Frank?"

"What do you do?" I persisted.

Elle puffed from behind the veiling limbs. "I'm desperately out of shape. And it's nothing unordinary, we simply go over a few finer points of the lesson. Like a quick little advanced brush up. For the better students. You know, he doesn't keep everybody. Each week, he boots out more and more pupils. Just last week, he tossed out Penny Olive, Zelda Fletch, and Sam Grimsmon. Hacking out students like mad. Cutting everything down to the bone. Escapes me, really."

"Not becoming an Auror, are you?" I tittered softly.

"Well, what if I am?"

I gaped. "Elle-----"

I heard a gasp and saw the brass hinges of the staff room fling open. McGonnogal thrust her head out and roared:

"POTTER!"

Elle emitted a harrowing shriek and slipped from the branch she was poised on. Watching in paralyzed terror, I saw her frail, lanky figure plummet from the tree and collapse on the slushy earth, face in the snow, arm and leg contorted in the most peculiar shapes. McGonnogal gawped, but then turned her enormous eyes to me. "Severus!" she cried.

I croaked. I'd never been so shaken in my life. Elle had fallen. She had. Oh God. She was dead. I knew it. She was. Oh God. I trembled. "Professor...." I whispered. I then crumpled into a similar position on the soggy sod in a faint. 

***********

It was midnight. I sat in the Slytherin bathroom, hair still sopping wet and clinging to my neck, sending drizzles running down my neck and spine. The bathroom was still muggy with the steam from my two-hour (no exaggeration) shower. My knees were at my chin and I absently thumbed the limp collar of my pajamas as I read the latest owl from my father. It'd been my third time reading it. I was still a tad wobbly.

_Severus:_

Greetings. Thomas Riddle brings similar tidings. Your schooling? It should be going along smoothly. There is not such think an unintelligent Death Eater. And I'm certain you are to make a fine one.

I'm not certain if you are aware, but a new breed of stupidity is beginning to germinate amongst the peaceful fools and radicals. Aurors. Tom presses us not to be fooled. Their cheerful missions do not dilute their lethal powers. He calls us to destroy as many as we can, get to the root of the pest before it ripens. 

What do you think, my son? I've barely corresponded with you, and we've never spoken, not even when you were home. Always a secluded little lad, you were, almost frightened of me. And I've always been occupied at business. I am hoping that this allegiance will finally form the paternal bond between us that has always failed before.

Hopes that you feel something somewhat similar.

Regards,

Macabren Snape

I blinked quietly.

***********

*Tell me if it's banal. PLEASE. Always Review. And always floss. And trust me on the sunscreen.*


	4. Tolerance is a virtue...I suppose

****

Chapter Four

Poor Little Cinderella

Somehow, through the student body rumor mill and a chirpy seventh-year girl named Diana Skeeter, gossamers of fact and fancy were woven into a mesh of half-truths, fantasy, and a few meager statistics about my fall. I can't truly scorn them, though; if it'd been about anyone else, I would have unquestionably believed it. The evidence was prominent enough, and so were the bios. Motives seemed superlatively true as well. In any event, this is what people thought happened to me, thanks to the school tabloid _Peppermint Imp_, which was closed for a week after publishing the following tale:

Diana Skeeter, Charming Seventh-Year Veela Queen, Writes:

Through clandestine sources, we received this tragic tale concerning the precocious and popular Ella Potter, sibling of Griffindor Seeker James Potter of the Marauders, and the devious and double-tongued Severus Snake, full-fledged pariah and snitch of the worst breed. On Friday night, December 9, Ella was taking her brother's broom for a simple flight. Seeing her, Severus (the greatest antagonist of James Potter) felt a surge of hatred and, using his wand, sinisterly hexed the poor girl into a tree, where Professor McGonnogal found her scratching to cling onto a limb. When the beautiful teacher flung open the window to assist, Severus transformed the bough into a stick of tepid butter, causing the attractive girl to fall three stories into the snow below. When confronted by McGonnogal, villainous Snake attempted to body-bind the dear professor. In good fortune, the charm ricocheted off the woman's belt buckle and in turn bound the hexing menace, causing him to collapse into the snow. 

Shockingly, Dumbledore (a saint of a Headmaster) has prescribed no punishment for Snake. Instead, he finds that Ella's plummet was of her own fault and, what is worse, is disciplining this innocent flower instead. You will find Ella assisting Madam Faust the Nurse this Saturday with testing the entire student body for lice and scouring the heads of those who test positive. Unjust? This paper believes so. So, if you happen to spot Ella on Saturday, give her your utmost regrets and support. And as for Snake? You can be sure that the story to follow this one will concern a certain female writer cramming this little diminutive recluse into a handy dustbin. 

I'm not certain if Diana ever got her sagging backside around to doing such a thing, but I can tell you the Marauders did. If they had done any of these things to anybody else, I would have been thoroughly impressed. But as it was Severus, I couldn't have been more heartbroken. Why could they not leave him be? Why could they not have done these cruelties to any other being on the planet?

A tiny account of these tortures included Truth Serum in his drink at the supper following the printing of the article (He attempted to appease my fury by admitting that none of those things he divulged were of any importance, but I refused to believe him upon seeing him sob in a closet the night he had drunken the potion.), shearing off his shoulder-length mane so that his hair barely brushed against the tips of his ears (Madam Faust was apply to return it to most of its natural length.), conjuring a tumbler of ice water to empty its bountiful contents on him whenever he exited a classroom (The classrooms in those days were barely heated, and Severus caught influenza half-way through the day), and unimaginatively tossing him inside the Girl's Lavatory at 7:30 at night (That in turn presented him with the punishment of trying to coax Moaning Myrtle out of flooding the bathroom every time it pleased her, which went about in vain, for she somewhat grew fond of him and when his four hour detention had been spent, she turned the entire room into a miniature Atlantic Ocean.). And there was nothing I could do to dissuade the Marauders' enthusiasm.

"Don't be a silly chick," Sirius grinned. "You're worth it and we're more than tickled to do it."

"You know we'd never let down a friend," Peter insisted.

"Shove it, Sis, we won't get caught," James chuckled.

"You can't be pushed about all your life," Remus beamed. 

"I guess no one expects the Spanish Inquisition," I sighed, trudging down the halls beside Severus, who was at the moment drenched from Moaning Myrtle's Torrent of Terror in the privy.

"Silly people don't know their own silly business," Severus informed me as he wrung out his hair morosely. "I tell you, they believe what suits them. Us being sworn foes is far more romantic and thrilling then neither of us truly despising each other at all."

"I suppose," I echoed vacantly. As we plodded by the Great Hall, a leaf of nailed velum on the door caught my attention. "Oh, the Christmas stay-over sheet," I muttered softly and rhetorically. "Looks rather loaded this year. Oh right. Yule Ball." I glowered with censure. "Snake pit."

"It's simply a formal affair," Severus informed me indifferently.

"Right." I arched my eyebrows when I saw Lily Evan's name connected to my brother's by a string of scrawled mauve hearts. "And Hell is just a sauna."

"Well, sometimes." Without another word, he snatched up the hovering golden quill magically conjured to remain beside the sheet and, with a brief flourish, jotted his name down.

I couldn't refrain from gawking. "_You?!_" I squeaked. "Staying for a trivial and banal affair such as a Yule Ball? Well!" I sniffed with half-feigned, half-disturbed indignation. "There goes all my reverence for you down the john."

"Did it ever occur to you, Elle," he sighed with a vague trace of irritation, "that not everything issued by society is a poison? Come along, Elle, don't act like it's never enticed you in any form. I've seen how wistful you become when the Willows gab on about it. You truly want to go, I know it."

"'Wistful'?" I reiterated with more than a dash of rage. "Alright, sure, red-handed, what girl wouldn't? But it's not like I have suitors queuing up to ask me, in fact nobody has, and so I'm just going to go home, mooch around in my room, and get portly." I blinked. "Again."

"Well, actually _I _was planning on asking you, _but_...." He trailed off mischievously, a sinister grin curling the tips of his mouth into a quiet grin. Relishing the astounded countenance on my face, he prodded my collarbone teasingly. "Come on, Elle, I'd really like to attend at least one."

"Yeah, but---" I trailed off purposely, hoping he'd understand.

"Why so fretful?"

"Well, it's...the principle of the thing, Severus, I---" I sighed gloomily and plummeted my eyes to the tiny crop of buttons on my school robe cuff. "You're my companion, and while I think the world of you and I sincerely do...it's not the same as being asked by someone who had...." I flushed a tad. "Feelings for me. The unfriendly sort."

Severus looked crestfallen. "I see," he murmured, fiddling with the quill as his face steadily flamed a brilliant maroon. While I gauchely stared at him for a good moment, he whispered, nearly inaudibly, "Elle?"

"Um...yes?"

"You know...it's very possible...to have _feelings_ for your best friend too. The unfriendly sort."

Pyrotechnics raged inside my veins, but a thin film of clammy sweat began to coat my entire hide. "What do you mean?" I croaked dumbly.

He did not reply. He merely locked his eyes to the floor, clasped his arms around him, and refused to emit another word. I gazed upon him for one, two, then three minutes. I then held out my hand. He glanced at it, but did not let his eyes touch my face directly. "What?"

"Can I borrow the quill?"

Slipping it from his slack fingers, I used my own quaking ones to inscribe "Potter, Elle Jane" on a thin line below "Snape, Severus Nicodemus." When I had accomplished this task, I turned about and gestured towards my brief composition with an air of wobbly, feeble triumph and a crooked grin. Without even taking a glance at it, he dotted a breathy little kiss on my lips. My first true kiss. I observed his pinking face with an air of unearthly euphoria.

Even when he was sopping wet and miserable, he still had incredibly soft lips. 

*Awwwwwwwww............................................*


	5. Peeves Would Be Proud

****

Chapter Five

"If We Are Like You In the Rest, We Shall Resemble You In That"

I never had a "thing" for James's sister. Honestly, I didn't. 

I was very much in love.

She was so...different from all of the others. Just unique. I don't know....She wasn't like Fiona, who could make a Dementor laugh and could cuddle up with a hippogriff. I believe that's why Peter was so fond of her, actually. His mother was very distant, and Fiona made the world a balmy and secure place for him. And she was not at all like Lily, so wild and bubbly like a joyful fawn. She complemented James perfectly, James who was so suave and sure. It was a pair made perfect, like a rose or tree Nature had made just right. And, although often times she was similar, she was far from Verona, the cavalier and bold girl whose unruly potency and polished air reminded me of a Victorian lady: fierce and controlling. She and Sirius made a boisterous duo.

Elle just...wasn't anything special. She wasn't. Quiet, really. Sharp. Intriguing.

It was certain that she could fancy me too; I'm a bookish, taciturn character, after all. 

Besides, we were the two remaining members of the Willows and the Marauders. Wasn't it destined that we should be a couple?

I had it all set in my mind that day. It was precisely a week before the Yule Ball that year and I made it a personal goal (one I arrogant assured myself I would realize) to ask Elle to join me. Firstly, she'd always been cordial with me. There was no reason for rejection. Secondly, it wasn't like she had many admirers. True, the geeks like Perkins Quirrel and Frank Longbottom were agog over her, but they didn't count. And I did.

When I found her, she was standing by the sign-up sheet with Snape. That lowered the bar a bit. At least I didn't have to squander time trying to convince her to stay: She'd obviously already signed up. And I didn't have to worry about getting her in private. Snape didn't count. He was a slimy little weasel who was probably going out with that sluttish Calypso Debris from the Slytherin Cheerleading squad, anyway.

"Hey!" I called out as I approached her.

She didn't seem to hear me; she was staring and blushing at Snape, who was blushing himself.

"Hey!" I repeated.

She snorted in surprise and whipped about to face me. "Hello, Remus. Um, what are you doing?"

"You signed up to stay over?"

She seemed to not comprehend my words, as if they were said in another tongue, but then glanced over at the sheet with comprehension. "Oh! Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Mm hmm. Most definitely. Why do you ask?"

"Well...you wanna go to the Yule Ball with me?"

Snape's eyebrows flexed and his eyes glazed over frostily.

Elle looked gauche. "Yule Ball," she echoed. She then blinked. "Forgive me, Remus, but I'm already going with someone else. I'm sorry."

Her words were an unforeseen blow to the spleen. I sputtered. "What? W-w-with who?"

"With 'whom', Remus darling."

"Ugh! With whom, then?"

She feigned nonchalance. "No one, really. Just...someone."

"Would you like to try Calypso Debris?" Snape inquired sweetly. "I'm sure she's unattended."

"Shut up, you!" I snapped. Bad enough Snape had seen me get shot down; he didn't even have the tact to leave me alone. "I don't see you with anyone either."

A furtive little smile braided his lips, but he made genuine attempts to smother it. 

"What is it _now_?" I demanded crossly.

"Oh, nothing," he insisted.

"Really, Remus," Elle piped up. "I'm sorry. I'll see you there, though. You can still have a good time."

"Seriously, though, I wanna know. Who is it?"

She heaved her shoulders. "It's nobody."

"Gotta be _somebody_," I persisted inexorably.

"Well, yes," she admitted hesitantly.

"Goes to this school?"

"Overtly, yes." She seemed to begin to bristle a little.

"Boy, right?"

"Remus!"

"Sorry, obvious." I paused. "Snape, what the hell are you still doing here?"

A grin.

"I'm gonna _smack_ you, you little bas---"

"Ooh, cunning."

I leaned over to clobber him but he smoothly stepped out of my path, sending me crashing into a suit of armor.

"Did you _mean_ to do that?" was his syrupy inquiry.

That was a little odd. Snape always seemed to get snapped up in on of our attempts to smack him around. Well, it was a Saturday morning. Maybe I was still tire---

"REMUS!"

I glanced up to see Sirius's face jutting out from behind the Boys Bathroom door.

"What is it?"

Sirius looked at Elle. "Oh hi, Ellie."

"It's 'Elle'," was her dull reply.

"Right, sure." His eyes fixed on me again. "Could you come in here for a sec?"

I was going to ask why, but I didn't. He poked his full head out and I saw: his entire head of long hair had been glued, strand by strand, to his pillow.

The first thing I heard was Elle's incredulous laughter and there was a crash as she slumped to the floor in hysterics. I was too shocked to even smile.

"God, Elle," Sirius barked, flushing crimson. "Knock it off. It's not funny. And---wait a tick, SNAPE! Why are you...." Sirius was livid. "SNAPE!" he roared. "YOU DID THIS, DIDN'T YOU?!"

"What, the bit with sneaking into your dorm, taking Dire's Dragon-Talon Glue, and patiently spending hours cementing your head to your pillow?" he inquired innocently. "Well, yes."

Sirius looked poised to pounce.

"Careful, Black. You wouldn't want to come out of that bathroom, less someone see you," Snape reminded him tauntingly.

"REMUS! Bash his head in!"

I swallowed. 

"Yes, Remus," Snape jeered, "bash his head in. Come on. He's waiting."

I made a solemn vow to my mother never to hurt another student, less anyone think I was a hazard as a werewolf. I looked at Sirius apologetically.

"Why not just go to breakfast and leave Sirius to his primping, eh, Remus? Let him cauterize his wounds."

Powerless, I obeyed his commands, him and Elle trailing behind me all the way as Sirius slammed the door shut.

"You know," I informed him bitterly as we entered the Great Hall, "James is going to get you for this. You'll be so sorry---"

"I think James is a little busy with something else at the moment." He looked at something in the center of the room. "Don't you think?"

I stared in horror at what he was looking at: someone had taken his report card (which was so horrible that we'd all made a blood-pact never to divulge) and placed it on a banner in the center of the room, just over his seat, with the words "Potter, James" in gilt letters at the top.

James looked hollow with disbelief.

"Oh...my...God," he murmured, walking like a specter to my side as he shook his head.

"Well, I'll be off, then," Snape chirped, gliding away triumphantly.

James put two and two together. "He did it, didn't he?"

"Maybe he's got more power then you think," Elle offered dryly.

"Ellamae?"

"Yes, James?"

"Shut up. Just shut up." 

****a/n: YEEEEEEEEEEES! Go Snape! Woohoo! Thank you for reviewing my story and giving me that idea!!!! You're right! Snape retaliation is super-fun!****Oh yeah, the chapter title? It's from "The Merchant of Venice." FYI.********


	6. The Dangerous Limbo of Decisions

*********Here's your update. It was as smooth to write as butter. Why have I been having writer's block for a year?

A Dangerous Limbo of Decisions

Verona alone had received her brother's truthful confessions on the "tryst to end all trysts" to occur the night of the dance. She alone successfully treated it with discipline and rational thought: Though outwardly she was a scornful sibling, she did care for her brother when occasions turned ripe. She was eager to stretch forward the olive branch to support the dual wishes of two estranged but intriguing characters in her life, Elle and Severus. She was becoming a tad too pragmatic for Severus' taste, but it couldn't be helped, because she had not an iota of romanticism. He discovered this along with her Christmas present: tailoring his robes for him in the dim light of a Saturday afternoon before exams.

"You needn't do this for me," Severus pleaded, sitting across from his nimble-fingered sister and her quick-flashing wand dancing atop a set of his father's best robes from college. "Honestly--"

She glared at him. "Look," she snipped irritably, "it is far too late to play coy, as I had to have Mother wrangle these out of the house when **It** was asleep. They were **It's** robes after all, and he is in such a piss now that it's the holidays and the pair of them have to entertain and be entertained by others. So don't play the martyr with me; I had to drag out these horrific spectacles to work on something for your benefit so take the **damn **gift."

That is Snape compassion.

"Come now, try them on," she ordered.

Docile for perhaps the first time in his life, he complied and allowed her to drape the fine silk of the robe that had adorned his father in his early twenties. His hopes fell when he saw himself in the monstrous mirror in the underground room they were stationed in.

"It's are far too large," he sighed plaintively.

Verona squared his shoulders and took to her wand again. "Stop bitching, I'll fix it."

"I fail to see any way you could---"

"Shut up, I'm doing it."

There was utter silence in the chambers as bolts of fabric drifted from the hem to fit his chassis. The cuts Verona's third-generation wand made we extraordinarily precise and the garb took shape via her patient fingertips. Severus would have been grateful if his sister had remained quiet, but as fate would deal it, she spoke with him brusquely.

"You're getting over your head, you know that?" she remarked placidly.

"Yes," he said grimly.

"Couldn't take someone else, could you? You're not very bright."

"Thank you….Well, it fits now, can I go?"

"Don't be a fool, if I let you traipse around in this homage to fop from the late forties, you'd receive quiet a social lashing. Plus, it's the wrong color for someone like you, it's scarlet."

"I don't care, I want to go," he insisted adamantly.

"Do this for Elle. The last thing you want to do is _embarrass _her more than she already will be."

Severus ceased breath while she carved away the lace appliqués and trim. "It was not my intention to do so," he insisted darkly, glowering at his own reflection.

"Then what was it?" she asked absently. The lace lay in a dainty heap at her knees like a basket of foam. She rubbed the length of the wand until it grew bristles like a comb and patiently began to brush the color out of the robe, leaving it increasingly white with every stroke while the color bled into the floor tiles.

"What kind of a horrible question is that?!" he demanded nastily. "When you care about someone…you want to be with them without all of the clandestine clutter."

"Whatever you say, honey." She paused in thought. "But it's not like she had a great deal of social prowess before, and being with you is like playing the dangerous game of subtraction. She will become perhaps as loathed as you, and that is saying something for someone as darling as her."

"HOW CAN YOU---?!"

"Oh, shut up and look at yourself!" Verona snapped. He stared at his sister in violent rebellion. "Go ahead, look at the damn mirror. Just look at you." His head wound about to face the likeness of a surly-looking individual with overly-broad shoulders, pallid skin, wilting hair shiny with oil, and merciless black eyes, swimming in robes too fine and too broad for his scrawny body. "Pitiable, aren't you?" she goaded unnecessarily.

For moments, he could merely fume with white-hot rage and against his better judgment, he ripped himself out of her fingers and consequently tore the sleeve of the robe quite a bit. "Well, aren't you a novelty?!" he demanded with an air of the provoked insane. "Save a few things, we could be identical in the right circumstances, and you try to conceal that with taking on _beau after beau _like no one will think you are wanton or **immoral**, but truly they talk about your promiscuity, and I've heard them! Do you think that it is any justice to _my _reputation that you are so impiously free with _your boyfriends_?!" The look he gave her surpassed rage. She had ceased to work on his robe and her lifeless fingers were clutching each other in a vise, her eyes magnified three times by her purple-rimmed spectacles that showed her eyelids were so far back into her sockets that the eyelashes were plastered against her forehead. The pupils of her eyes glinted eerily. "Well, don't act like you've never heard---"

She obviously wasn't in the mood to have heard anything, because she (in the manner of a stepsister in Cinderella) ripped off the robe from his shoulders, once so delicate a work of craftsmanship, now a brocade dust rag, the dangerous sound of buttons scattering against walls and floors pealing through the room. 

"**_How dare you talk about me that way! To think I was going to help you, you little… well you know, I think I will help in a way, to say won't James be surprised that you're taking out his little sister as more than a friend!"_**

"You PROMISED you wouldn't, you BITCH!"he bellowed in return.

****

"And don't _ever_ think that you know what's going on with _me_, don't even _TRY_," she roared. She seized two fists worth of his hair and dragged him across the tiled floor, so angry that the use of her wand exceeded little more than a tool to attempt to gouge an eye out.

His guttural snarls must have reached the outside hallway, because within moments, distressed little feet he knew belonged to a certain three-foot male teacher were above their heads and quickly descending the spiral stairs. Verona's only response was to fling open the door with one hand and cast him out of it with the other. "And take this rag with you!" she flung after him coolly, lobbing the carcass of the robe in a wad beside him. With no more compassion in her step than a cold rock, she quietly closed the door to the room they had both occupied and drifted past a few onlookers like a queen in a court.

Attempting to achieve such serenity, Severus took the carcass of the robe and stuffed it into the rucksack of a passing second-year student in the manner of disposing of a chewed off fingernail. Inside, he was fuming and the hairs on his arm bristled lividly. Not only had he lost his only confident in the matter, now he had nothing to wear. It was even less of a consolation to think of what his father would do to the rest of the family when the robe was found missing in action. The injustice of how his mother would probably pay for Verona's pilfering enraged him to the point where if just one word was spoken to him, just one word---

"Hiyee," drawled Narcissa, henchwoman of Lucius Malfoy, the leader of the school's strongest gang who held unsettling interest in him. Personally, he found it best to ignore the pair of them, especially Narcissa who was an exceptional bore. Narcissa was accompanied by a girl with big teeth named Courtney and a girl with a small vocabulary named Regina.

"Piss off, you little lemmings," he hissed.

The girls erupted in a tempest of high-pitched squeals that made his brain scream in agony.

"Lemon? Who calls someone a Lemon?" demanded Courtney between giggles.

"_Lemming, **lemming**_, you cow," he snarled.

"Oh, be quiet, Lemon," Narcissa threw at him like it was the wittiest thing.

"A 'lemming'," he informed them dangerously, "is a rodent that travels in packs with very little willpower outside of the pack."

"Lemon, Lemon, Lemon---"

"Hey, Regina," crowed Narcissa, "let's make that his new name: Lemon."

For some unspoken reason, when it would have usually suited his being to walk away quickly and drown out their clatter, something unnatural snapped in Severus' whirring clockworks and, just as Professor Flitwick entered the room from his long flight of stairs, Severus rounded on the gaggle of girls, nearly jabbed poor Regina's left eye out, and screeched, "_Laetae Virgini!"_

For a fleeting second of horror, neither Severus nor Flitwick could not believe what he had done or why. Severus felt like he had just about personally thrown himself out of school when he heard the trio scream in unison:

**__**

"Oh my God, I'm blind!"

The next few moments were a torrent of pictures with no connection: three stumbling girls who howled and wept piteously, a Flitwick so angry that he took to stamping his feet, a few boys laughed, a strong set of five claws dug into his skin as he was drug out of the hall, Flitwick was in his office demanding an explanation, all ending in Severus vomiting passionately into a hastily presented wastebasket before collapsing on Flitwick's shag carpeting.

What a horrible, horrible day….

****

That horrible, horrible day was preceded with a Sunday devoted to manually rewriting the letters on the 300 globes of the school so they were again legible, a devious punishment for someone with such minute and chaotic script. Any lack of tidiness with his writing was soaked into the globe and he would have to redraw all of the names of the countries again.

Two other people were in detention in Sprout's empty greenhouse: a Griffindor first-year boy named Deems who was polishing crates and crates and crates of silverware and another Slytherin, a girl in his year named Galatea peeling and washing potatoes and carrots. There was utter silence in the greenhouse, save the sound of snow making delicate heaps outside of the heated house, until Deems wretchedly overturned a crate of silverware, setting Galatea and Severus on edge.

"This is ridiculous!" Deems bellowed. "My Dad's a judge for the stupid ministry and I'm sitting here because I, well you know, nobody's watching us anyway. You know what?" He sprung to his feet with a little bit of rebellion swilled with a great deal of spoiled brat. "I'm just gonna leave. What they gonna do about that? Huh? Tell me?" Both Slytherins returned to their toil. "You guys should leave too….You can if you want…." He received empty stares. "Well…f-fine," he stammered, throwing himself down on the stool and returning to his polishing, only taking time to emit intermittently, "Jeez, guys….Jeez…."

There was another pause. 

Severus acknowledged Galatea with absent thought. He had seen her before in classes, but she had never spoken with him and he had taken that as life. She seemed to have Puerto Rican parents, but he knew for certain she had been born in Wales, his own birthplace. She was not overly gorgeous, but she was…nice, in a way. Very big teeth. BIG teeth.; nice, toasted-looking skin; tiny, smaller in stature than himself; not thin at all, curvaceous. She had the blue, semi-extraterrestrial eyes of a Siamese cat. She was sort of extraterrestrial altogether in a school of pasty, brown-haired children.

Galatea's blue eyes slid to one side of her face. "Hey," she choked out in the tiniest tit-mouse voice a human ever had. Severus hastily returned to painstakingly repairing the "f" of Africa. Galatea let out the gustiest sigh he had also ever heard and went back to washing out a peeled potato in the sink before tossing it in a bucket with an unsettling clatter.

"Is it true you're here because you flipped out at a teacher?" Deems demanded loudly in a turrets-reminiscent voice, dropping a handful of forks.

Severus was under the impression that he was being spoken with , until Galatea spoke in a harsher voice that wobbled: "I don't want to talk about it, okay?"

Tactless Deems struck again. "He's here for beating up girls."

Galatea gave him such a disturbed and elevated look that Severus felt himself go nine shades to burgundy. "Why?" she asked quietly.

Severus stopped short of blotting up the last "a" in Australia, saving himself from having to start all over again. "How can you ask that of someone you don't even know?" he demanded.

"I'm sorry," she muttered in a way that made him feel slightly sympathetic but greatly irritated. "I…heard you blinded Narcissa," she offered helpfully.

"What, are---"

"No, no, I think that's wonderful!" she said in a voice so eager that Severus had to bite his tongue because it sounded either completely moronic or virtually insane. "She's a bitch, great job." There was a disturbing pause as Severus stared her down like a cat does before approaching an animal it has never seen before. "Is it permanent?"

He laughed guardedly. She was a tad too fluffy.

"No, serious….Serious."

He paused. Or utterly bipolar. 

"You frighten me. Don't talk," he commanded darkly.

She obliged and returned to her work moodily.

He waited, weighing thought against reason. "Wait." She turned around. "Were you being sarcastic…or truthful…when you were happy over Narcissa almost being permanently blind?"

She swiveled about and tilted her peeling knife in an unsettling way. "I'm really just lonely, I think. It does a lot to people."

Severus wasn't sure if he liked her.

But then again, he wasn't sure if he hated her either.

It was a limbo of decisions.

****

"Hey," said Elle smoothly, touching his arm very gingerly as he walked out of Sunday detention.

"Oh, hello," he replied.

"Surprised to see me?"

"Didn't you have anything else to do?"

"Well, you're my best friend, so…just homework."

Severus felt guilty about something, but he could not determine it. Something about her being so eager to see him. He felt like he had betrayed her on a level he could not remember.

Just as they began walking, he caught the back of Galatea's long sheet of coffee-bean-colored hair. "Galatea, where are you going?"

She whipped about, startled in a way to be spoken to. She then gave a brief shrug that seemed a tad too casual. "Oh, I don't know. Back to my room, I guess, there's no one else to talk to."

"How so?"

"Well, they just disappear places when I want to find them. I guess that's my fault, isn't it?" She looked to the ground in absent, shallow thought, fingers locked together. "Or at least my problem, I think. So it goes, anyhow." She seemed to be hinting to wanting an invitation but did not want to be one to invite herself.

"Would you like to come with us and talk?" He still was tasting the novelty in using that word, "us". He planned to use it increasingly every day.

Her low cheek bones rose in a smile then fell in a matter of moments. "Oh, no…I don't think I…yeah….So, anyway, I hope I'll see you outside of detention…."

"Right--"

"Because it sucks," she finished unnecessarily, but somehow it still sounded right. She waved a brief parting and walked away calmly.

"Well, shall we---What's your problem?"

Elle was giving him the stoniest look. "Who was that?" 

"Oh….That's Galatea Roganich….I think that is her surname, I will have to….Why?"

"Why did you think I would want to walk around with someone I didn't even know?" she goaded irritably.

"How the hell should I know, girls like to be with other girls, right?"

"Not with their boyfriends."

Severus fell short of saying "Who says I'm your boyfriend?" before he caught himself. Why did he say that? He would have been…this was what he wanted….

They walked together for about an hour, but it was leaden with something imposing: guilt over something Severus couldn't decipher. There is nothing like riddling yourself, especially when there is no certain answer.


End file.
